All along everyone believed Singer preferred to stay out of the limelight and in the background. What a load of junk. What person wouldn’t like to receive the praise of their peers, the accolades, the awards? Singer had wanted all that, too, but it was as if the media only saw one half of Merrick/Singer, the telegenic half, the half with the easy smile and the charming anecdotes. It wasn’t Singer’s fault that he froze at the lectern and looked like a cadaver on TV or came across as an idiot savant in an interview. He’d been given no choice but a shadow existence — only it was under Merrick’s shadow he’d had to live.

Again he cursed that his former partner wasn’t here, denying him the opportunity to lord it over him. He wanted to look Merrick in the eye and scream, “It’s your fault! You let the polluters keep destroying the environment and now you are going to see the consequences.”

He spat over the Gulf of Sidra’s side, watching his saliva fall until it became part of the ocean, a drop in the biggest bucket in the world. Singer had been like that once, a small piece of something so much larger than himself it was impossible to believe he could make a difference.

He would be insignificant no longer.

CABRILLO’S first order when he returned to the Oregon was to send her charging northward, to where Africa bulged into the Atlantic and where the hot winds blowing off the Sahara eventually evaporated enough water to spawn hurricanes. He didn’t return to his cabin until he’d overseen the refitting of his ship. The Liberty’s hull was scrubbed and her tanks refueled and she was back on her davit. The two submersibles had had their coating of oil scoured off with solvents and brooms, their batteries recharged, and all the equipment that had been removed put back. The Gatlings, 40 mm, and .30 calibers had all been checked over, their barrels and receivers cleaned and their ammo bins refilled. Armorers were repacking the AK-47s given to Moses’ men and tagging the almost five hundred guns they had taken back from Makambo’s forces. Juan hadn’t forgotten the bounty Lang Overholt had put on those weapons’ return.

But as busy as he’d been, he couldn’t come close to the work Dr. Julia Huxley and her team were performing in medical. They had twenty-three patients to look after, a total of thirty-one bullets to remove, and enough organs and limbs to put back together it seemed she’d never leave surgery. The instant she stripped off one pair of bloody rubber gloves an orderly snapped on a fresh pair for her to tackle the next injured man. At one point her anesthesiologist quipped he’d passed more gas than a judge at a chili contest.